21 ms·

Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore?

• fiedzia 5y ago
  In short, FOSS or not, do not work on something that doesn't benefit you (either by being paid or solving your problem).
• rndhouse 5y ago
  Creators and artists are making money hand over fist all over the internet. From educational courses to music loops. And copyright plays a big part. But the humble software library developer is on another planet. For them its sponsorship or nothing. Otherwise their work wont carry the virtues of "free" and "open".
• flohofwoe 5y ago
  Was it ever worth it? If somebody shares their work for free I would guess that making money out of it isn't their main motivation. The main problem seems to be that other people using this work sometimes don't understand the license and expect the author to provide support.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• Gunax 5y ago
  It's always been this way. You shouldn't enter open source expecting accolades or deference. It's awful the way log4j is being treated. I just don't think anything has changed.
  • lelanthran 5y ago
    > It's awful the way log4j is being treated. Sadly, that's the way all FLOSS gets treated. I saw this exact same sentence when heartbleed came out with just the project name changed. I don't think that anti-commercialisation clauses in the license will fix anything, though.
    • sokoloff 5y ago
      Anti-commercialization clauses can stop your code from being used (or dramatically reduce it), if that’s your goal.
  • watwut 5y ago
    I was astonished by amount of people who have strong opinions on quality of log4j ... and apparently don't know what logging library does, don't know why projects use libraries and generally don't seem to know much about development ... while writing in development forums.
• mgaunard 5y ago
  The reasons you write open-source code: - training purposes to better yourself - as a showcase or to build up your reputation to get hired - because you have a niche need in your personal life that no one else already solved None of those reasons are invalidated by big corporations using open-source without paying back.
  • im3w1l 5y ago
    Writing the software and releasing it with a non-foss license might be a better fit for such a person. Free for personal use? Sell it for a modest fee? Put the source on github without allowing people to modify it? Many possibilities.
  • kzrdude 5y ago
    I'd like to include my reasons: - It's a lot of fun - It's addictive Honestly I was a bit struck when a friend looked at my github and said it was a nice portfolio. The material view never hit me at all: my github is a product purely of what I've wasted/spent time on for fun, not to make a profile. :)
    • rnoorda 5y ago
      I'm not a fan of the trend I've seen where GitHub is treated as a portfolio- I once had a hiring manager I worked with tell me I should delete a few of my GitHub projects, as they made me appear "amateurish." I WAS an amateur! And I don't want to feel like I need to to hide random things I've tinkered with just to impress others. As a result, I know those who have multiple GitHub accts, one for fun personal stuff and one for showing off to potential employers.
      • ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
        Or, you could do every bit of work as if it were for a vital infrastructure project. That’s what I do. Even my “farting around” projects have a lot of polish. I write everything I do as if it will ship. I find it establishes great work habits and personal integrity, and my GH ids (I have a personal one, and a couple of org ones) make outstanding portfolios[0]. Not to worry, though. My experience, is that potential employers never look at at GH portfolios. Instead, they rely on leetcode tests to evaluate applicants. [0] https://github.com/ChrisMarshallNY https://github.com/ChrisMarshallNY
• larsrc 5y ago
  Define "worth". We were never in it for the money. I maintained Dia for 8 years and never saw a penny. If you don't like your FOSS project being used by evil capitalist megacorps, put an anti-commercial license on it.
  • db48x 5y ago
    If he does that then it won’t be Free.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • fivelessminutes 5y ago
    There's a licencing 'race to the bottom'. If there is a liberally-licensed alternative, resources will divert to that.
    • Radim 5y ago
      Right, you cut to the heart of things. There is a licensing "race to the bottom" happening. Which makes sense from the demand side (of course people want free). But where does the supply side come from? Why does the floor keep constantly dropping? Who are these developers, always willing to do more for less? In my experience: * Some of it: people who open source their hobby projects. The personal upside of investing resources into open source is fun & practice. * A lot of it: academia. Universities have an infinite supply of indentured labour in students and postgrads. The personal upside is grades and graduation. The institutional upside is publishing and grant money. * Lately: large enterprises. These have the resources to throw high quality engineering behind their open source projects (unlike the universities, where quality has always been a struggle, due to tremendous "developer" churn and different incentives). The personal upside is salary; the business upside is $$$ via "commoditize your complements". Added bonus: open source serves as an HR tactic too. Put together, the demand for the "race to the bottom" is there and so is the supply. And so it happens. The machinery behind "If you don't do it (with a permissive license), someone else will".
• nopenopenopeno 5y ago
  The FOSS that was imagined by Stallman, where end-users could actually use FOSS products in their everyday lives, is not possible under capitalism. So what you have instead is effectively a network of semi-public property primarily for industry use. But, just as anything else that industry cannot turn for a profit, FOSS is and will always be in the lowest of priorities, if a priority at all. Cheers to Stallman, but at this point the future of FOSS will have more to gain from the work of Karl Marx.
  • IceWreck 5y ago
    > The FOSS that was imagined by Stallman, where end-users could actually use FOSS products in their everyday lives, is not possible under capitalism I have to disagree. Use a Linux based operating system, self-host your internet services at home, use google free android, or do a subset of that. Its all open source and works locally.
    • Invictus0 5y ago
      Simply get an FTP account, mount it locally with curlftpfs, and then use SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem.
      • tkot 5y ago
        Is CurlFtpFS still developed? Last time I considered using it it looked abandoned and there was some regression from years ago which supposedly made it really slow. I think rclone offers pretty much the same functionality and more?
    • nopenopenopeno 5y ago
      end-user != IT professionals For average end-users, “use a linux based operating system” alone comprises a mountain of barriers, but most are rarely even approached because they’re preempted by lack of reliable hardware support and lack of support for staple applications like Word, Excel, and Photoshop.
      • 5y ago
• rnoorda 5y ago
  Is it 'worth' working on? That's a function of what I deem worthwhile, which no one else can really answer for me. 'Anymore' implies that it used to be better, which may be true, but I'm inclined to think I may have changed even more than the ecosystem. My time was worth less in the past, so it may have been a valuable use of time (valuable as a term leading back to the first point) than currently. Is there still value in working on FOSS? Yes. Is it worth it to you, or me, or any certain person? Maybe. Is it changing, likely for the worse? I think so, and the examples in the article are concerning.
• sam_goody 5y ago
  Although I agree with many of the sources of frustration mentioned in the article, there is a way: For most software projects, there should be a way to buy a commercial support license. For many, such a license should be required for use in any org which is over X employees. Even if not enforced, this way a conscientious dev can justify for paying for the license. In addition, for some of the deeper "plumbing" projects, that cannot be really charged for independently, they can included in the licensing of some of the projects that use them, as a clause for certain types of orgs, etc. Something like - using X also requires a license for log4j of $50/yr - where that could even be a pittance, but included in many projects that benefit. This will make the software much more reliable, while actually giving a basis for open source devs to have the funds to support themselves, feel self worth, and pay for a lawyer to protect their IP for things like TikTok's move. As an open source coder, I theoretically love the above, but don't know what license, how to set it up, or how to handle the contracting and payment. In addition, I don't know how to justify my commitment - what exactly am I promising and how. Nonetheless, if someone like Gitlab were to deal with figuring out the technical steps of the licensing and payments, you bet that I would be happy to move my code off GitHub for it (well, my code is already off GitHub, but whatever), and I bet many others would follow suit.
  • rndhouse 5y ago
    I'm working on precisely this problem. My current idea involves payment plans defined in code. See: github.com/openfare/openfare
    • sam_goody 5y ago
      Good luck! At least promise, if but a dull glimmer of hope...
      • rndhouse 5y ago
        Thanks for the luck! The up-and-coming generation of developers have grown up exposed to millionaire content creators. They might start wondering about their cut.
  • 5y ago
• midjji 5y ago
  Yes, The most important thing of FOSS has always been about ensuring an alternative to closed source. This provides people with leverage in negotiation with the corporations and states in a way they simply would not have without it. Beyond this, It provides a pathway for a much quicker evolution of the products, something actually driven by the most driven users, instead of corporates approved. Writing this on firefox on linux I'd say its working and has done, and will keep doing great good.
  • tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    Nice theory. Sadly the reality is we have very little leverage against the huge corporations which have been helped to their monopoly status on the back of open source software.
    • midjji 5y ago
      Consider how much less influence people would have without it. Microsoft has been forced to backtrack on customer exploitative shit multiple times due to the very real threat that it would lead to linux getting a huge boost. Without a functional Linux Desktops for users, there is no doubt to my mind the windows app store wouldn't be the only way to install apps on windows and there would be no way to sell an app that installed on windows without paying microsoft the standard 30% of total sales. The recent fight between steam and microsoft illustrates this perfectly. But they have tried every few years, claiming anti virus, child protection, anti piracy, convenience, anti spyware, anti ransomware, and well its always been the pro microsoft profit in reality ... But they lost each time, because each time too many of its users just threatened to move to linux. This is essentially the only reason you can install, run, and develop apps on windows without everystep including microsoft fees and licenses today. Look at how stagnant and shitty matlab used to be, and its exorbitant priced to understand what happens when FOSS fails to provide. The niche matlab used is the, at the time, almost non-existent overlap between FOSS programmers good at both GUI UX, tutorial writing, and math. This changed with the FOSS python, numpy, scipy, matplotlib, and pytorch projects. Matlab has gotten extremely much better in the last few years, and its mostly because they finally got competition, they have also started to rapidly drop their effective prices for new users, but its too little too late, and it will never return to the stagnant cashcow it used to be. Matlab was is a troll sitting on a shitty toll bridge while both trying to destroy similar bridges and maintaining its own toll bridge as little as possible. In the last decade FOSS mortally wounded it in passing. Inversely reduced FOSS influence predicts exploitation. as shown by how astonishingly bad the walled gardens of consoles and phones are. They have gotten away with being astonishingly shit, mostly because FOSS was intentionally and successfully made too hard to use on them. But these are just visible examples. The great effect of FOSS has never been what it brings about, it is in what it prevents from occurring in the first place, and that, by definition, will never be easily visible.
• est31 5y ago
  Software is eating the world and it's mostly through proprietary licensing models. But this doesn't mean that the fight is lost. In fact quite the opposite: it means that FLOSS is more needed than ever. Generally, when a new area opens for software, proprietary software usually has a massive head start, but once the area becomes more well understood, FLOSS products emerge, and often they steal the show of the proprietary competitors, at least in the long run. In the areas FOSS was able to get a footing, it usually remained. Web browsers have been trending towards the open core model for example, same goes for compilers, most of which are FLOSS. On the server, the GNU/Linux platform is the most commonly used one. Same goes for embedded applications including Android. Does this translate to end user freedoms? Sadly, in many instances it doesn't. But I think it's still worth fighting for freedom, even if the only reachable audience is other freedom loving enthusiasts instead of the broad majority of people.
• sandGorgon 5y ago
  Like gitlab you mean ?
• dragonwriter 5y ago
  > I have written licenses to make GitHub hesitate before using my code as input to Copilot Microsoft has claimed that consuming code for Copilot is fair use, and therefore does not require permission from the copyright owner, so how would a license—an offer of permission under limited terms—impact that at all? > But even if I solidify the licenses, what stops GitHub from ignoring them by claiming that their Terms of Service allows them to use my code? Well, the fact that arguing the ToS would be a retreat from their position that they don't need permission in the first place, whether or not the code is hosted on GitHub.
  • jeltz 5y ago
    Yeah, the license does not matter because if the fair use argument does not hold then Copilot would violate even very permissive licenses like MIT since Copilot does not do attribution.
    • _y5hn 5y ago
      So how is this practice a benefit to anybody but Microsoft? Who takes on the legal risks?
      • jeltz 5y ago
        Are you asking the wrong person? I personally believe their fair use argument is both morally wrong and legally dubious (but I am not a lawyer). But my only point which I bothered to make in my comment above was that if they violate licenses (which I suspect they do, but am not sure of) they violate all licenses except outliers like WTFPL. So picking a licens which does not permit Copilot is trivial (assuming copyright law restricts things like Copilot).
        • _y5hn 5y ago
          It was more of a general question. Copilot seems to be software to undermine FOSS, and fits in a general pattern ie. the purchasing of github, VSCode (I'm learning Doom Emacs now). It's all the same things as the past 3 decades though. Nothing new, just new rat traps.
• jchw 5y ago
  I hate to be contrarian but I can't understand what the point of this article is. It's a bit meandering and quite cynical. For example, I agree that the company behind MuseScore has exhibited some bad behavior that is worth discussing, but their attempt to introduce opt-in telemetry to Audacity is difficult to classify as adding "spyware." Also, the article meanders through a lot of different points that have very little in common other than being cynical. For some reason, it starts talking about stuff that isn't related to open source. It also talks about a lot of different issues regarding open source. I don't understand what the overarching message is, except for something along the lines of "all software development sucks." The conclusion also strikes me as a little bit dramatic too: > I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place. If I make Rig Open Source, it could very well do more harm than good, regardless of whether I get paid! And if I don’t, it won’t get used anyway. 1. I don't understand why it's likely to do more harm than good, or by what measure. How does this tie into previous examples? How do you expect it to be "exploited"? 2. It doesn't seem to approach the completely valid question of why developers don't like using closed-source tools. 3. It seems to imply that the mere act of releasing software should entail some kind of payday or recognition, but that doesn't make any sense. I agree open source is undervalued, but so are a lot of things. Ask people who draw if they feel like their skill is valued appropriately; it's not. The reason why businesses are able to make money off of software is because they don't just write software, they also sell it. Even if you're trying to live off of donations, you still have to "sell" it. Look at how well-branded successful projects like Blender and Krita are! And a lot of projects use the "progress report" blogging format similar to the one successfully used by dolphin-emu to engage with the community. It's a lot of non-programming work. I don't mean to devalue anyone. I can just about guarantee that if you do the selfless job of putting quality open source into the world, it will never, ever be paid at market rate. But that's the price you pay for being able to do whatever you want. An artist, 99.99% of the time, cannot make money creating whatever they like; most would probably only ever find serious success in graphic design. I think open source is a wonderful asset and has produced some amazing artifacts for us to enjoy that have done enormous good for the world. Can you even quantify the amount of good done by having a robust production-ready operating system used by everyone from budding geeks in gradeschool to production servers at Fortune 500 companies? I hope you find whatever you are looking for, and I don't like being dismissive. But I urge people to see the non-cynical side of this.
• vermilingua 5y ago
  As a fresh CompSci graduate, is it worth it/valuable to try and work on OSS; or am I more likely to just get in the way? If so, what are some good resources for getting started?
  • pabs3 5y ago
    Absolutely. There is infinite work to do, lots of it impactful, lots that can lead to jobs working on open source, and lots that definitely will not but is really needed. As a newcomer to OSS, you might want to try one of the paid OSS internship programs like GSoC or Outreachy, if done in the right area those often lead to jobs at open source companies. Outside of paid work, the best way to get involved is to use OSS and fix any issues you find in the tools you use. I've worked on everything from the Linux kernel to Windows hex editors that way. Many projects will have pages about how to help out, for example I've included Debian's below. https://www.fossjobs.net/ https://www.fossjobs.net/ https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/Resources#internships https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/Resources#internsh... https://www.debian.org/intro/help https://www.debian.org/intro/help
  • watwut 5y ago
    Thr biggest risk is that your pull requests will be ignored. You won't be in a way at all. Even very good pull requests are often ignored for reasons unrelated to quality. Don't do anything big before you are reasonably sure the project will process your commit. Surf through projects to find ones that seem to be interested in contributions. Red flags are many ignored unresolved pull requests or too much hostility in project. Some projects have issues labeled with "beginner friendly" or some such. Have a look there and try to fix something. If it turns 9ut to be boring, move onto another project.
  • throwawaylinux 5y ago
    It can be. Firstly if you are very passionate about something it can be a good way to learn about it or even end up pushing the state of the art in some cases, so it can be worthwhile as any hobby is. But also a lot of companies take it quite seriously now so it can be good for your resume particularly if you are not in the industry yet and want more experience or some references of your prior work. So it can be worthwhile even if you aren't completely passionate about it to the extend you would be content to always do it as an unpaid hobby. It's not good to assume you will make money directly on your own project or some niche project, but there are lots of established projects which are in demand in the industry and you would be able to make money working on them. I work on the Linux kernel which I started as a hobby and I've been able to take my skills between several different companies and continue working on the same software (although different areas) which has been good for me. Not to say you can't get transferable skills or relevant experience working on proprietary software and some may prefer the challenge or variety of working on different code bases at different jobs. So proprietary software is pretty on-par in those respects. There are a lot of areas where proprietary software is ahead too so if you want to work cutting edge software in a particular area, open source might not be the best option for you. As far as getting started, start with working out what you are interested in and want to work on.
• adabaed 5y ago
  Imagine blaming a FOSS dev/mantainer because you didn't do your job properly and trust a third party on a production code!
  • watwut 5y ago
    I find thins point of view equally absurd as all the abuse on maintenners of Foss. It is standard for production code to rely on third party libraries. Not just standard, but the opposite is considered bad thing - you are not supposed to implement everything from scratch. If you do, you will end up with more bugs and issues. There is nothing, absolutely nothing in development last 30 years that would say "it is bad to use open source libraries".
    • piaste 5y ago
      Yep. Log4Shell and Heartbleed were nasty security bugs, but imagine living in a world where every single software shop wrote their own logging libraries or SSL libraries. 99% of them would have far worse vulnerabilities. It would be like '90s php cowboy coding.
      • izacus 5y ago
        See also: The state of proprietary closed hardware drivers and IoT firmwares. There's more security bugs in those than in Windows Me.
      • tonyedgecombe 5y ago
        Absent open source we would all be buying those libraries from small software shops just as happened in the ninieties before OS become so prevelant.
        • mbrodersen 5y ago
          Exactly. And the people maintaining it would be paid to do it. Instead of complaining about nobody paying them.
        • 5y ago
• _y5hn 5y ago
  The problem here is having any care for platforms such as twitter, tik tok, github. These problems are the same issues they were 20 years ago, and why FSF states it's about Freedom.
• sschueller 5y ago
  Yes and especially if you are a state[1] or publicly funded[2] as in tax payers are paying your bills. [1] https://github.com/admin-ch https://github.com/admin-ch [2] https://github.com/SRGSSR https://github.com/SRGSSR
• TheChaplain 5y ago
  It is, even if I don't contribute super-regularly I primarily fix issues that bothers me in XFCE as well as Mate. That of course will also benefit others and I feel my time is well spent. Working with different code bases is also great practice and one always learn something new.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• v-yadli 5y ago
  Not sure if it's good analogy but consider playing music. You practice your favourite instrument and post it on the tube. Worth it. You get to know people with similar style and taste so you jam together. Worth it. You guys stream the sessions on Twitch and got fans. Release EPs on bandcamp. But it starts to take too much personal time away from you. Worth it? But the fans want it! You'll have to decide. Sometimes you work for months on an album. People cheer on the live stream, but not a lot of income from selling the art. Worth it? Pick your RUNLEVEL. :)
  • ghoward 5y ago
    Author here. This is a good analogy. I guess it's still different from what I meant because while making music does not really do harm, software can in the wrong hands. (Okay, music can still do wrong in the wrong hands, but the scale of harm from software is far bigger.)
• grenran 5y ago
  I do open source for my own enjoyment. Who cares what other people or companies do with my code.
• aborsy 5y ago
  Log4j vulnerability is mentioned. But is proprietary software more secure than FOSS?
  • boomboomsubban 5y ago
    I think their point is at least Oracle employees are paid for any abuse thrown their way.
  • scotty79 5y ago
    It's not, but it's not what the author is talking about. He's mostly talking that FOSS is a thankless job creating artifacts that will get appropriated by some greedy corporation.
    • kortilla 5y ago
      That’s not what “appropriated” means.
      • scotty79 5y ago
        Could you elaborate? I'm not a native speaker.
        • boomboomsubban 5y ago
          Appropriated generally means taking without the authority to do so, which isn't true with free software. It can also mean to take exclusive control of, which somewhat works with further changes being proprietary. I thought the use was fine.
          • scotty79 5y ago
            So the case of tiktok taking OBS and building closed product on it wasn't 'taking without authority to do so'?
            • 5y ago
• contingencies 5y ago
  Yes, absolutely. Selfish personal reasons to work on open source might include not wanting to run unseen software, being able to take your work to subsequent engagements, community network effects including new features, maintainership, translations, issue reporting and resolutions. Moral reasons might include contributing to tools that are available to all. Commercial reasons might include not being vendor-locked, ensuring there is no secret DRM system, ensuring that code and files can be accessed and modified far in to the future even if you lose a decade/team/team member/compiled binary/compilation toolchain, etc.
• gonzo41 5y ago
  Yes, because you never know when your contribution of a logging feature will give you a great story to tell about lessons learned.
• scotty79 5y ago
  For me open source is like math. You don't work on math so that people will thank you for working on math. You don't expect people using math you developed contributing back to math or paying you. You get paid however you managed to organize getting paid. And work on the math for the math and nothing else. If you have other expectations maybe you'll find other endeavours more fulfilling. Which is sad but it is what it is.
  • pjmlp 5y ago
    Except people working on math actually get paid and don't feel entitled to get work of others for free.
    • scotty79 5y ago
      They are not always paid for developing math. Sometimes they are paid for teaching math, sometimes for applying math. And they are developing it on the side.
      • pjmlp 5y ago
        Teachers are always developing their stuff on the side, it is part of the job, and either teaching or applying is paid. Also they tend to buy their tools.
        • scotty79 5y ago
          You can easily draw parallels to open source where you can easily make a living out of teaching how to use open source software and components and applying open source software at your job. Most people are not paid to develop open source software or for applying or teaching about open software they themselves developed. Very few do. Same with math.
          • pjmlp 5y ago
            Having had teachers on the family, including my mum, I kindly disagree in regards to math. Having bought several books from open source projects as means to try to help the authors, I am quite aware how little it brings home to keep a sustainable life.
• hacknews20 5y ago
  The blog is really mixed up and conflates different issues. It uses a tiny set of not representative examples to validate a conclusion the author has already come to. I totally agree that some people and companies take advantage of what others do for free, but that is not new and would be true if you said the same about the relationship between employees and employers or similar. It’s also true that when people go above and beyond someone somewhere could blame or take advantage of the extra those people gave - again not new and totally possible in any scenario or market. We’ve all been there and bought the T-Shirt. The author has expectation mismatch, perhaps taking a break and then making a final decision is best.
• baybal2 5y ago
  > Is It Even Worth Working on FOSS Anymore? They are putting it wrong. You do not work on open source for compensation, but because you want to. People who got into opensource with sole aim at scoring high profile job with some dotcom make no good for the state of opensource community. Big, high profile open source projects die from maintainer/contributor dilution who confuse supporting an oss project with full time job. There is a critical mass limit of such people introduced into OSS projects, past which irreversible "toxicity chain reaction" starts. Then "Foundations," "Steering Committees," "CoC councils" start to grow like barnacles on the body of the project, and it soon dies because normal people can't, and wont do this stuff.
• kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  "Since companies steal Open Source software without a care in the world" If you don't want companies to use your code for free, don't publish it for free. If they violate the licence, presumably it is a case for the courts. People have different reasons for working on open source. Some want to make money from it, others don't. As an example, I don't know the full ElasticSearch story, but if Amazon's fork was legally allowed by the license, it worked as intended. People insist on open source precisely because they don't want to be dependent on one vendor's decisions. Isn't ElasticSearch worth billions? Would they have become as popular if they hadn't been open source?
  • wheresmycraisin 5y ago
    > If you don't want companies to use your code for free, don't publish it for free. If they violate the licence, presumably it is a case for the courts. Good look to the OBS team in pursuing legal actions against ByteDance/CCP.
    • kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
      So don't contribute to open source because of China/rogue countries? OK then.
      • wheresmycraisin 5y ago
        More like: don't expect totalitarians to give a damn about some little hippy license. Rule of law means nothing to the CCP.
        • kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
          But the question is, should that be a reason not to contribute to open source? Also they do steal proprietary stuff, too? What about child pornography, people hosting it using open source software? Seems like a better reason not to contribute.
          • 5y ago
• throw8932894 5y ago
  Of course it is worth it. You can make very good living as remote-guru-consultant with total freedom. All while making similar money to FANG employees (counting stocks, high cost of living and taxes). OSS developers do not have to be unpaid doormats. If I would be log4j dev, I would probably just wipe out all JNDI related functionality from project. Companies who need JNDI for backward comparability, would have to pay for support.
  • piaste 5y ago
    > OSS developers do not have to be unpaid doormats. If I would be log4j dev, I would probably just wipe out all JNDI related functionality from project. Companies who need JNDI for backward comparability, would have to pay for support. This. Backwards compatibility is, as a general rule, not fun. And if you're not coding for money and you're not coding for fun, what's left, exactly?
• Mikeb85 5y ago
  If it's not worth it to you don't work on it. If you do OSS because you want others to use your software but you're afraid to charge for it then just stop. Of course you'll be disappointed. The whole point of OSS is you put it out there, others use it, fork it, add to it, commit back, and because of pooled efforts now the software is better. No one owes anyone anything beyond the terms of the license. DHH recently wrote a great article about OSS which seemed to be inspired by recent discussions: https://world.hey.com/dhh/i-won-t-let-you-pay-me-for-my-open-source-d7cf4568 https://world.hey.com/dhh/i-won-t-let-you-pay-me-for-my-open... The best way to get paid for OSS is to use it for a real product. Ie. Make something beyond just code.
  • chii 5y ago
    > The best way to get paid for OSS also "The best way to get paid" is to not make it OSS but to charge for it! Because if the only reason some one would use the software is because it was free...
• MichaelMoser123 5y ago
  Looking at my own experience, as a full-time employee: - I keep learning something in the process - It keeps me busy, if there is downtime at work, like when we are waiting for a management decission or waiting for some other component to complete. (that is of great value to me, right now; as it keeps me from being depressed) - It gives a deep feeling of satisfaction, to see the working result - I am my own boss in the process So yes, it is worth it, but it does not directly translate into money. I guess it might be helpful, if I am forced to turn to work as a contractor; in this case it would be a kind of showcase. (my own stuff is here: https://github.com/mosermichael https://github.com/mosermichael )
• cobertos 5y ago
  Only certain FOSS is worth working on for me. Here's my heuristic as of today. * Don't work on FOSS that supports a SaaS or proprietary product. You're enriching someone else's ecosystem for no money. You take on the communication bandwidth and issue load of dealing with not only your issues but their issues too. Your software is useless if theirs fails. It's thankless. * Don't work on FOSS you aren't using yourself anymore. This heuristic isn't fully fleshed yet, but I've found if I stop using software I wrote, it just becomes a support burden for me. Especially frustrating are entitled users or entitled users who make money entirely using my software who want niche issues fixed. Not PRs, they want me to debug it all or put in the thought to get the features working. (Probably doesn't apply if you're immersed socially with a friend group working on a FOSS project though)
  • psychstudio 5y ago
    Also: entitled users who ask if x can be done, and after a comprehensive answer which took a lot of time and thought say "can you make a demo and post the code. thanks"
    • tonyedgecombe 5y ago
      To be fair that isn't limited to open source software, I get plenty of that with my commercial software as well.
    • rs999gti 5y ago
      Why not reverse bounty or charge these entitled users for fixes and change requests? If they want the patch or improvement, they should pay for it. Log4J CVE might have been the perfect use case for asking for 50K-1M EURO for the maintainers to patch the bug, to any corporate clients this is a drop in the bucket.
      • voakbasda 5y ago
        That starts to sound suspiciously like an extortion racket.
• ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  This feels more like a cry for help, hope the author is doing okay. Christmas can be a rough time for many people. To answer the question though, like climate change, or whatever big issue, there's personal things you can do, there's groups you can join but we're in a democracy and pushing for things to be put into laws and then enforced is better than relying on copyright which was never really designed or operated with the best intests of society as a driver, despite that being the official spin.
  • ghoward 5y ago
    Author here. I'm fine and stable, just discouraged and feeling like software, which is the only talent I have, is not good for me to work on because it may do more harm than good. I have a good wife who is supportive and makes sure I am okay. Thank you for the concern! > To answer the question though, like climate change, or whatever big issue, there's personal things you can do, there's groups you can join but we're in a democracy and pushing for things to be put into laws and then enforced is better than relying on copyright which was never really designed or operated with the best intests of society as a driver, despite that being the official spin. I think you're right, here. Laws may be what is necessary.
• jokethrowaway 5y ago
  Plenty of good closed source software get used by developers. Often it's in the shape of services but I've seen a fair share of proprietary code.
• tlocke 5y ago
  I work on a few Open Source libraries and they're used by companies that make a lot of money, and people often regard me as a mug for doing the hard work for free so that other people can make lots of money. The argument I give in response is that from an economic perspective, you can only make money from a unique advantage, and since Open Source can be used by anyone, it's not giving anyone a unique advantage. I'd put it this way, that any company that's not using Open Source is putting themselves at a disadvantage.
  • 10000truths 5y ago
    Also, lots of open source software only achieves widespread use because they are open source. If e.g. Daniel Stenberg had decided to charge for curl instead of releasing it under a FOSS license, very few would have bothered to use it, and in all probability, some other person would have written a FOSS replacement for it.
    • tonyedgecombe 5y ago
      I'd argue that most open source software only achieves widespread use because it is free (as in beer).
  • u10242 5y ago
    The way is solve this is that I release everything under GPL. Companies usually won't touch that, but everybody else might.
    • stavros 5y ago
      Same here, though I usually use the AGPL for extra freedom.
    • tlocke 5y ago
      To me, it's not a problem that my code is used for commercial gain. I use the MIT licence (a permissive licence). The key thing for me is that it doesn't give companies a competitive advantage, rather it puts companies that don't use it at a competitive disadvantage. It's thanks to Open Source that I'm writing this on a system that uses 100% Open Source software (okay, maybe the BIOS isn't). A good thing about Open Source is that if a company uses it, they're more likely to report / fix bugs, which helps everyone.
• bell-cot 5y ago
  The title is a personal question. You could ask the same thing about collecting stamps, writing fanfiction, staying together with a so-so romantic partner, being an active member of a local church, etc. Maybe all those things felt great to do, back in the day. But now... Most of the dark patterns he mentions are more (cough) features (cough) of monomania-type capitalism than of FOSS. Or just human nature. Sitting on your fat ass and blaming the poor guy who did all the work was really old before the pyramids were built. Same for the tragedy of the commons.
• Subsentient 5y ago
  My advice is for the OP to make his build system GPLv3 licensed and sue anyone who willfully violates that license. Open source still has lots of life left in it, but copyleft licenses are now increasing in importance, and the days of letting it slide when a company violates your license are now gone. To decide on what license you want, ask yourself, do you want this to improve software as a whole, or do you want this to improve FOSS? Does the image of proprietary software benefiting from your work soothe or anger you? Nowadays, it's becoming increasingly important to choose the latter. If you don't care what happens, you can license it as MIT or something. There are still valid cases for that.
  • bbarn 5y ago
    > My advice is for the OP to make his build system GPLv3 licensed and sue anyone who willfully violates that license. Except that filing a lawsuit costs money, and if by nature your product is free, where are you getting the money for said lawsuit, and what damages are you suing over? You might be able to get a cease and desist order for copyright, but then what?
• wheresmycraisin 5y ago
  Open source is great for marketing. You can market yourself as a developer to your peers. You can market your proprietary software by open sourcing a small but useful part of it. You can market your business/service/protocol/whatever else by open sourcing the software to best use it.
• rndhouse 5y ago
  There is another way. Where we can have: * modifiable and fork-able code * free for non-commercial use * and payment plans defined in code for commercial use. I'm working on it at github.com/openfare
• kklisura 5y ago
  I think all of these discussions revolve around singe point: people want all of the benefits of working on FOSS - working on what you love passionately, working at your own pace, whenever, wherever, not being responsible to anyone but yourself and also have access to large audience of developers that will use your software, but they also want all the benefits and incentives that corporate/company structure offers. I don't think these can reconciled.
  • ahelwer 5y ago
    In my view it's about the interface. Any utopian community must interface with the rest of the currently-not-utopian world. I suspect the utopian aspect can only be maintained if that interface is very small and restricted. Otherwise the property-based wider society will grow to dominate and maximally exploit the utopia, as is its nature. This concept is explored in The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin.
• zoul 5y ago
  Gosh, is it now so de mode to do something just for the fun?
• stavros 5y ago
  I never work on FOSS. I work on software because I need it for me, and make it free for others to use. The question of whether it's worth it is moot, as yes, it's worth it because I need the software for myself.
• h2odragon 5y ago
  Resonates. I just wrote a little script to give me some model geometry numbers. I'm sure others could use this, I wrote mine because all that exists online is half-ass Jskirpt pages that are covered in ads and offer a slightly different form of this calculation than I want. Once upon a time I would've published this somewhere and let anyone else who wanted those numbers for a project of their own at least have a chance at finding and using my code for it. Today, I don't have a place for that kind of thing (someone took offense to my presence last year and got me booted from several platforms). Even if I did, I wouldn't want to undertake the burden of having published something others might find useful, even in an utterly trivial context like "where do I put supports on a model railroad spiral ramp?" Im too old, too ill, and too weird to get hired anywhere, so any code I write now is just for me. Its liberating. I no longer care about things like CamelCase vs under_score_debates and can set m y text lines at 300 char wide if i want to.
  • danuker 5y ago
    > got me booted from several platforms This bothers me. Can I get some more detail and drama? > Today, I don't have a place for that kind of thing If you want to share your work with close friends, you could use say, self-hosted Gitea or GitLab.
    • h2odragon 5y ago
      > more detail and drama? I'm really not certain myself wtf happened. Maybe I just fell victim to my own paranoia. Maybe quoting MLK and supporting an Amish school really are that controversial. Maybe it was the "naked lizards" video game mod. Since i mentioned it that way, I'll also mention that I've been tempted to resurrect a site for some reason or none simply because up until last year, I had had some online presence continuously since 1994. I keep deciding not to, because I don't want to deal with the inevitable drama of offending someone by existing. The only host I'd be happy with anymore would be someone leasing me bandwidth and an IP on a common carrier contract; and I'll stack up Pis or scavenged laptops and host horse porn if i feel like it.
      • 5y ago
• onion2k 5y ago
  If I make a pencil and give it to someone, and they use it to draw a picture that they sell for $10m, they haven't ripped me off. They've added a lot of value to that pencil. I haven't lost anything. They haven't "profited from my work". They've done something pretty amazing using a tool I created. Good for them. FOSS is the same. The idea that people are taking FOSS code and building billion dollar companies with it are somehow doing nothing of value except deploying your code is complete nonsense. FAANG companies that use FOSS software as the backbone of their tech stack are not simply deploying some code. They're working hard and adding value on top of it.
  • janto 5y ago
    Ha! Equating the relative value and effort that went into the underlying FOSS tech to "just a pencil", is a pretty accurate description of what a company does. In reality, many a company would put a frame around the picture and market itself as an innovative artist. There's value in the frame, sure...however...
    • onion2k 5y ago
      Equating the relative value and effort that went into the underlying FOSS tech to "just a pencil", is a pretty accurate description of what a company does. Take Facebook as an example. The first version of Facebook was essentially built on 4 FOSS projects - Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. Facebook couldn't exist without them (or alternatives). But of themselves nothing about those projects represents the value that lies in creating Facebook. Suggesting that the value in a product is within the programming language, database, server software, or OS that it's built on makes no sense. Certainly no more than suggesting a valuation picture owes something to the person who made the pencil it was drawn with. It absolutely doesn't. FOSS applications are tools that we use to build things. They're essential, and critical, and immensely useful, and companies ought to fund the maintenance of them much more, but they are not where the value in the applications that people use them to build comes from.
      • janto 5y ago
        Facebook's value of storing and serving images and posts of individuals is all in the tech that it is built with. Are you saying that there is nothing in the engine, body or wheels of a race car that represents its value? If your product's value requires certain technical properties (robustness, speed, conforming protocols) and you did not develop those then you did not create all the aspects that your users value. A picture's ability to convey the art, absolutely does owe a lot to the technology (ink, canvas, culture) that was used in its creation.
• ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  I like doing OS work, because it has trained me to do better work. These days, I like to open-source pretty much everything I do. It’s not very popular, and that’s fine with me. I still write every one of my projects as if I were doing a major-league infrastructure project; to be used by millions. Helps me to develop good habits, and I don’t need to worry about the quality of my dependencies. I eat my own dog food. Most of the work I do is SPM modules, which I use in larger, aggregate, development work. They are often “spun out” of my larger projects, as I proceed. I may see that the section I’m writing, has use outside of the main, so I stop work on the larger project for a few days, while I extract and develop the submodule as a standalone project; complete with documentation and testing. Feel free to check out my work. My GH handle is the same as my HN handle. I stay busy. Also, I write software to help people. Here’s a relevant comment that I made, yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29660819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29660819
• teekert 5y ago
  Even the words "And remember, there are people bashing the maintainers for screwing up something they essentially did as volunteers!" are to harsh, if you ask me. Everybody makes mistakes and it can be extremely annoying to have to fix something when you don't get paid for it (it's your own time). I know this because I run my own "cloud" back-end, when it breaks, I get annoyed but I got to dependent on it to ignore it even though I started it for the fun of it. Now magnify this feeling by a million^million because the whole world is breathing down your neck and sometimes even bashing you. Btw, I saw this tweet about OBS now many times and I keep wondering why Jesus would steal from OBS :b If I were higher up the tree in my company I'd dump money on these guys. Or at the very least set up a "donate back to open source" initiative, perhaps based on economic calculation and amounts of software used. Now that I think about, maybe I'll start such an initiative, see how far I can get it.
• Tomis02 5y ago
  Work on it if: - it's fun for you - if you use it personally Don't work on it if: - it's just for CV purposes - you have this idea that you should be working on FOSS because FOSS is great and you should somehow contribute - you want to create FOSS for the sake of creating FOSS. The world doesn't need more code, it needs less. There's plenty of garbage code floating around Regarding OP's comments on GitHub Copilot - I agree with the sentiment but I wouldn't worry too much. If the "stolen" code snippet is easy to write then it's really no big deal it it gets copied. If it was difficult to write then the person "stealing" it probably won't be able to understand it, which will lead to trouble down the line. It's not (yet) the same as ignoring the license of an entire repository.
  • ghoward 5y ago
    Author here. > Regarding OP's comments on GitHub Copilot - I agree with the sentiment but I wouldn't worry too much. If the "stolen" code snippet is easy to write then it's really no big deal it it gets copied. If it was difficult to write then the person "stealing" it probably won't be able to understand it, which will lead to trouble down the line. It's not (yet) the same as ignoring the license of an entire repository. Boy, I hope you are right.
• solididiot 5y ago
  I'd personally not work on SW that could be used by someone else commercially at zero expense. In that sense I never understood why people moved away from GPL and started using "do whatever you want"-license types. Funny trivia. I spent considerable time working on corporate SW that acted as a gatekeeper for GPL-like licenses. It seems that one of the worst things a corporation can do to itself is use free SW with such a license. Nope. And why should they? There are so many options with so-called "friendly" licenses. Friendly to the corporation that is. I see it as another aspect of huge corps evading any kind of taxes and IT-crowd actually being OK with it. I mean an unknown dev would be more than proud to do free work for K8S (and many do) just for the sake of putting it in her CV and _maybe_ cash out on it with a better paying role later on. But the fact remains. She, essentially, worked for free for Google, Amazon, Red Hat, etc. All the same as she is OK(ish) with them tax evading because if you get to work for them you'll be extra rewarded (unless you disagree that much of the huge salaries in IT are down to tax evasion). In any case if you approach FOSS romantically I think you're in for a big let down. It's some form of business transaction. Nebulous and tricky but business nontheless.
  • johannes1234321 5y ago
    > In any case if you approach FOSS romantically I think you're in for a big let down. It's some form of business transaction. Nebulous and tricky but business nontheless. That it one view. However I for one did quite some work on opensource work, where all I got out we're interesting problems to solve. There I didn't care who is using it in the end. I created a solution and maybe got feedback from people smarter than me on the solution. This is more since than business. (And yes, with other projects I was able to get attention on me for getting jobs and some I do for work. But no, it's not all about business and money. My job pays enough and some things are fun.
    • solididiot 5y ago
      > My job pays enough What if that wasn't the case or you were unable to find a job altogether? Would you still think the exact same way?
• zokier 5y ago
  > It makes sense why there is scarcity; after all, this is work done by volunteers in their “free” time. This is the big fallacity here, although I'm not sure why "free" is in (scare) quotes. FOSS isn't necessarily volunteer free-time development; afaik for example vast majority of Linux development is done by salaried engineers as their day-job. That is the way things should be done imho.
  • ghoward 5y ago
    Author here. You're right that I should have addressed that point. I used "free" in quotes because it's not free in the sense of "no cost".
• southerntofu 5y ago
  > The logging companies learned the lesson, and it’s time the software industry learned it. Nitpicking from the main point, but logging companies are still destroying our planet/forests. They haven't learnt a single lesson. The most valuable woods come from very unsustainable exploitations far away (from my perspective, eg. Philippines/Canada), and as for the so-called "sustainable" local exploitations here in France they earn the label by destroying entire ecosystems and replanting between 3-6 species over the entire area after they've chopped everything down. It's still ecocide on a wide scale.
  • carols10cents 5y ago
    Yup, this. And in places where logging companies aren't ruining forests, it's because of government regulation.
• Quarrelsome 5y ago
  I thought audacity backtracked on its telemetry? https://github.com/audacity/audacity/discussions/889 https://github.com/audacity/audacity/discussions/889
• trasz 5y ago
  Those are not problems with FOSS as such - they are problems with the current economic system allowing companies like Google or Facebook to parasitize on society, including FOSS.
• cblconfederate 5y ago
  The problem is some people are married to old projects that do not offer them nothing anymore. Their contribution has been valuable , there is no need for continued commitment to maintain the social credit. Wish there was some "official" open source title they could print and frame it on their wall as forever proof of their valuable contribution. Just drop them, do something new, life is short. A lot of contributors are from countries where cost of life is much cheaper, and they are happy to contribute as they don't compare themselves. But in the end, being kept busy maintaining an open source project for the benefit of rich people elsewhere is a bad use of their time resources.
• jcelerier 5y ago
  as someone who uses linux and free software as main interaction point with computers, yes it is
• rvieira 5y ago
  Just a very tangential note about the last part of the post > I can't even get a job IMHO, making a single contribution to an important FOSS project (e.g. Linux kernel, a major programming language or a widely used library), although not easy, will definitely land a job very easily for anyone.
  • ghoward 5y ago
    Author here. I have code in FreeBSD. Does that count?
    • rvieira 5y ago
      Don't mean to contradict your experience, but IMHO, yes. I think that being an upstream FreeBSD contributor will make it easy getting a job in some areas/companies. It speaks much louder than (formal) qualifications IMO.
• addicted 5y ago
  It seems to me that FOSS has become too open. Stallman is, as usual, probably right with his more aggressive GPL licensing that makes it much harder for proprietary software to exploit FOSS.
• jlg23 5y ago
  Before FOSS contributions looked good on résumés, people just solved problems and made their solutions freely available so others would not have to solve the same problem again. Once in a while you'd receive an email thanking you for that, more often than not, you'd not get any feedback at all. But that was OK, because it all was just about solving your problem, so the reward was there.
• throwawayHN378 5y ago
  So the author doesn’t know if it’s worth working on OSS because people were making log4j memes
• swframe2 5y ago
  A better question, should we change the license of all FOSS to require companies to pay a support fee so that a lot more people can work on FOSS full-time? Or maybe, should we create a company like redhat that hires people to work on all FOSS projects and is supported by industry and governments?
  • indigochill 5y ago
    I think both Docker and Gitlab have gone this way. Docker for Windows requires a commercial license for a company over a certain threshold in revenue/employees. Gitlab has a free community edition and an enterprise edition with the bells and whistles you'd probably want in that context. IMO, this is the future of open source in general: different licensing terms depending on the user/application. However, both Docker and Gitlab have professional teams behind them. It might not be the case that a particular important FOSS gizmo's creator is interested in writing up/enforcing better licensing terms or providing the maintenance a commercial client would expect.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• GnarfGnarf 5y ago
  The problem is that users confuse software and support. Once written, software can be copied and used at no extra cost. Support requires manpower, is tedious, difficult, requires a whole different set of skills; few will do it for free.
• icambron 5y ago
  These articles never clearly state what problem they want to solve. Some candidates that seem obliquely implied: - That you personally don't feel motivated to make OSS because of the way it's structured. Of course no one can fault you for that; that's the default position. Same for me and, say, juggling. But should the ecosystem really reorient itself around encouraging you--and specifically you--to participate? - That there was some implicit social contract that has been recently violated by the commercial use of permissively licensed stuff. But there was no such social contract, the OSS dynamics haven't changed recently, and the whole point of the MIT and Apache licenses is to allow this. - That the ecosystem doesn't have a structure that lends itself to the flourishing of OSS. This one is just clearly untrue; look around. I hear all this vague grousing about the state of a system that seems to be working really well and for which participation is entirely voluntary. What problem do we want to solve again? (There was also something in this article about ads in paid products, which I also find obnoxious, but that seems like a non sequitur? Did I miss something there?)
  • ghoward 5y ago
    Author here. > These articles never clearly state what problem they want to solve. Sorry. The problem is that I want my software to do more good than bad, and I'm not sure it will. > (There was also something in this article about ads in paid products, which I also find obnoxious, but that seems like a non sequitur? Did I miss something there?) I see ads as harm, harm through manipulation. I know the article was not well-written; it was more a feeling dump of discouragement.
    • mlinksva 5y ago
      > I see ads as harm, harm through manipulation. Like pollution, right? You working or not on FOSS isn't going to make a difference. Demand that ads be taxed/banned/regulated -- like pollution -- and hey, that's an activity you could do to fill time not spent working on FOSS, so that your not working on FOSS actually does make a difference!
• cdrini 5y ago
  For me, one of the most discouraging things I've found about code in general, is that there's too much of it. And it's all the same. Every project, every repo, every developer, is just writing the same code, over and over again. Countless developers in the world are spending countless hours, are spending entire careers, writing code that's already existed. Real humans, are wasting their lives and their time. One of the best things about open source for me is that it reduces this a little. By having public and free code, you can begin to reuse others' work instead of re-creating it. It's a radical multiplier on progress. Imagine having to write log4j when all you really want to work on is creating a search engine. An individual can build a project at a level of complexity/finess that would otherwise require LIFETIMES. Every day, I get to regularly complete projects which I shouldn't be able to complete in my lifetime because of open source. And I get to contribute back to that fabric/infinite conversation. Proprietary code, although it might garner usage and benefit its users, will never be part of that fabric. This is why open source is worth it to me. Regardless of what proprietary companies do, I'm getting value from and providing value to open source.
• rs999gti 5y ago
  Why not change from FOSS to FOSSFI. Where -FI is "for individuals". Then all businesses must pay to use FOSS. Is there any benefit in making FOSS free for all users including corporate users?
  • McWobbleston 5y ago
    I could see it if you use the project for proprietary purposes yourself and are not the only contributor, or if you want to reach a wider audience with the project. In general though I'm surprised how large the permissive OSS ecosystem is, but I'm very thankful considering it makes my professional life easier
• WBrentWilliams 5y ago
  I think the problem is the word "free" in open source. Along the axis of freedom, this is a strength. You can read the source, figure out how it works, and adapt it to your uses. Or, as my senpai (pity English doesn't have a single word for "talented co-worker that demonstrates the ideas you haven't thought of yet) puts it, "I can read the source for a feature I like, and then I know how to do it, and I can avoid the features I do not want." This isn't copying, this is studying. You read the source to understand, then write your own implementation that better fits your use case. However, there is another axis to consider: In English, "free" also means gratis. This means that no one with recognized authority is enforcing a shift of resources in exchange for using the code as written. Yes, you can ask for resources, and there are many ways to do so, but without enforcement, you get the most common behavior of "thank you, I will" and all the attendant problems, be that of pushing the license to limits, finding loopholes, to lack of funding, dead projects, to (possibly) self-interested actors placing features in open source that they can later exploit because no one really audits the code (See also log4j. I am not saying that a government placed something exploitable in the code. I am not saying that a private actor did so. I am saying it is interesting that a piece of widely used infrastructure has had an exploitable feature for so long). Criticism aside, how does one provide freedom to learn and explore while curtailing the free rider problem? A first-generation solution: Sell copies of your source code for the resources you need to maintain it. One example would be to make the source available once money has changed hands. You cannot stop the buyer from turning around and giving the source away for free: Once you have made a sale, you have made a sale. That particular copy of your source has created all the profit it will create. A second-generation solution: Sell future updates. This is an idea I have been playing with, in terms of a business plan. Your source is free (both gratis and freedom) and you sell tokens. The tokens are capable of being purchased separately. Tokens can be exchanged for votes to determine which new features are developed and which bugs are fixed. They key is in selling the tokens.
  • rs999gti 5y ago
    > Criticism aside, how does one provide freedom to learn and explore while curtailing the free rider problem? Make FOSS free for individuals. Developers can download, read, integrate, etc. the code or package for free at home on their personal PCs. The moment FOSS software enters the corporate or academic space, it becomes a licensed product requiring fees and statements of work to be paid for licensing, use, and changes.
• redthrow 5y ago
  > I have written licenses to make GitHub hesitate before using my code as input to Copilot I thought the solution was to treat FOSS as CC0 (public domain) [1], not create yet another license nobody's going to care or use. CC0 is probably a better license for most FOSS & probably close to what happens in reality (sans a few exceptions) as TikTok and Copilot examples show. [1] https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/ https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc...
• timw0j 5y ago
  I work on an open-source program full-time, being paid to work on it by a company that makes a commercial product overlaid on top of it. I don't feel like the company making a product based on it diminishes the work I do on it at all. We have a fairly vibrant community of users of the OSS software. I feel like any work that I contribute as a paid employee also enriches those users and their individual use cases for it.
• nunez 5y ago
  I find that working on FOSS while on a big employer's payroll is the move these days. Every tech company is investing tens of millions of dollars or more in open-source and pays devs well to work on these projects
• InvOfSmallC 5y ago
  Only if you treat it as a product that makes you money.
• nativeit 5y ago
  I find the entire notion of FOSS contributors looking for "their cut" to be a flawed understanding of what FOSS is, why it exists, and how it is supposed to work. This is viewing FOSS from a very specific perspective that's associated with capitalist economics and broadly how it treats intellectual property. It's as if some developers committed their code to projects expecting some sort of informal, unspoken, "scratch your back..." sort of patent agreement. If you want to use FOSS to make money, then go right ahead. If you have some kind of philosophical or principled view that finds the notion of for-profit software abhorrent, then don't--but also don't then expect those who did to turn around and toss a $20 bill at you. You aren't entitled to part of their success. What you are entitled to is the freedom to take the same FOSS they used and have a go at creating something of your own. This is the compact. If you find it distasteful, then do as the author did and ask yourself if it's really what you want to spend your efforts on. I personally think there is a great deal of inherent value in FOSS, and I have never for one moment thought that it's some zero-sum game where anyone else's behavior, beliefs, approach, success, or failure in any way subtracts from what I can achieve. A lot these philosophical debates around FOSS remind me of similar discussions regarding socialism and anarcho-communism. There is a great deal of useful thought and objectively good ideas to be taken from these socioeconomic theories. I subscribe to a considerable number of them, and put forth a considerable effort to put into practice the values and beliefs they espouse. But pragmatically speaking, free-market capitalism and constitutional democratic republics are going to be the dominant economic and political systems for the foreseeable future. Certainly my lifetime. So every time I encounter a fundamentalist or someone who flatly refuses to engage with any entity or ideal that runs counter to their anarcho-communist orthodoxy, I cringe with the anticipation of hopelessly idealistic platitudes and the associated injured ego that the greater world won't "listen" and fall in line. Yes, FOSS was/is/will be exploited by dishonest actors. It will go unappreciated by the large majority of those who benefit from it. It will never be as commercially viable as other more exploitative business models. It will likely remain an esoteric niche, even if it continues to be the buzzword darling of the tech industry. Twas ever thus. Just remember, you can't write code if you're wringing your hands. We contribute because for us personally the benefits outweigh the risks/burdens. We do it because we believe in the free and open exchange of ideas. We do it because we find satisfaction in the act of creating novel things and sharing them with others. We do it because we want to give back to a community that has already provided us with considerable value. If you're doing it because you're looking for glory and wealth, I invite you to look elsewhere. Viva la revolución!
• ricc 5y ago
  Working on OSS is always worth it... What I have doubts on is the F (free) part.
• johnthescott 5y ago
  writing is easy. you just sit at the keyboard and bleed.